How To Do Online College Like a Boss: A Bro’s Guide

by David Ferrer

I know how you’re feeling right now. I mean right now. Words and stuff are boring. Books are lame. You live in the gym, not in the classroom. You prefer drinks and ladies over libraries. You want major coin, not college majors. Fat stacks of cash, not books. Sorry bro, but no pain, no gain. If you want to graduate from being a basic bro to being top shelf, you need a real job. And you can’t get a real job until you know how to flex your mental muscles. That means education. And to do that, you need to carboload on books bro. How can bros like you and me do this? You’ve come to the right place. You’re online right now. I mean right now. In fact, you have already started your online education by reading this article about online education.

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You need schooling bro. I don’t need to convince you. If you don’t believe me, you stopped reading already. If you do believe me, then you’re still reading anyway. You and I aren’t pretty enough to get a free ride like some loverboy or car model. Nope, we are the lugnuts who have to work for a living. Get used to it.

But we don’t have to settle either. We can work our way up in the world, and that means getting an education. A good education is like polish on a sports car. It’s just the right thing to do bro.

1. Select

The first thing you gotta do is select the right school. But, bro, schools are like any other product: some are jewels, some are junk. There’s premium education out there but you have to make sure you didn’t sign up for one of the janky ones. You don’t want to go to some hack-cademy that takes your money and can’t deliver. You need a school that’s accredited. It’s just like how you want your pharmacist to be the real deal. If you want results, you get the good protein. You wouldn’t go to your uncle Eddy’s van to get supplements. You’d go to a premier place. Uncle Eddy doesn’t have the good stuff. He mixes weight-loss laxatives and protein power. The only results you’ll get are the squirts. That gives a whole new meaning to the squat rack.

You and I aren’t pretty enough to get a free ride like some loverboy or car model. Nope, we are the lugnuts who have to work for a living. Get used to it.

The same goes for school. Some diplomas aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. They’re toilet paper and you’ll need more of that if you shop at Uncle Eddy’s van. There’s nothing wrong with trying to make a little money, but these schools are just in it for the money. Don’t mess with junk school degree mills. Ask around (or Google around) and find out if your school is a real school or if it’s a scam. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Remember that girl at the club who was totally into you? I think her name was Lola? She was not what she seemed.

2. Upgrade

Next, you need to make sure your hardware will work, and upgrade if you need to. Your skill don’t matter if your tools can’t hang. In nerd lingo this means, “confirm technical requirements.” You’ll be one sorry bro if you sign up for classes, pay your bill, and then the first day you realize your computer stutters, stops, and starts whining, like weaker bros on leg day. You want to make sure your computer can handle the load it’s gonna carry. If you don’t know how to check this out, call one of your nerd friends. If you don’t have any nerd friends, I get it. I didn’t either.

You’ll be one sorry bro if you sign up for classes, pay your bill, and then the first day you realize your computer stutters, stops, and starts whining, like weaker bros on leg day.

You can probably call the school, ask for the “help desk” or the “IT” department (pronounced eye-tee, not “it”). And they can probably tell you how to figure it out. You may need to download a program, install an update, or buy a disc or something. If your computer is old as Skynyrd music, you may need to buy a whole new computer, maybe something boss with racing stripes and a free install of Madden 2017. Your video gaming could be epic with a new hard drive. Speaking of “hard drive,” that reminds me of a joke, but I don’t have time to get into it here.

3. Fortify

You need to make a fortress for school work. Batman has the Batcave. He-Man has Castle Grayskull. If you are going to be a boss like them, you need your own lair. It’s kind of like a workspace, since it’s where you do your work, but you have to guard it like a castle. It’s also like a mancave except instead of doing man-stuff, you’re conquering school-stuff. You can think of it as brain bunker. It’s a protected place for exercising your brain. Whatever your fortress looks like, it needs good lighting. It needs internet access with a solid signal too so the lectures don’t sound like bad kung fu movie overdubs. It doesn’t hurt to turn off your phone and lock the door too. Keep the roommates and girlfriends from barging in while you’re in your brain bunker. No one else is allowed into your fortress, except dogs. Dogs can come in. They’re cool.

4. Organize

You already know this one, but just to be clear, you need to organize. You learned this one from the gym. The sacred rules of gym code tell us to “respect people’s mirror space,” and “no beast-yelling on warm up sets.” But more important than both of those rules is #GymCode rule number 1: Rerack your weights. You don’t have to go polish every machine, but you do need to wipe your drippings off the bench and rerack your weights. If no one cleaned up after themselves, the gym would grind to a halt. You can’t get work done with everything in the way. The same goes for your brain bunker. You need to organize the laziness out of that place.

No one is going to organize your stuff bro. You gotta do it yourself.

Your computer space needs cleaning too. I’m not talking about antivirus programs, that’s obvious. Computers get sick and you need to call Doctor Norton or Doctor McAfee. But I’m talking about how your computer gets junked up with trash like a digital frat party. No one is going to organize your stuff bro. You gotta do it yourself. And don’t save everything to the desktop bro. That’s basic!

Figure 1: A Junked-Up Desktop. Don’t Do This to Yourself! Courtesy of Mike Kivikoski at: https://www.slideshare.net/mkivikoski/using-sass-as-a-workflow-for-design

Save all your school stuff in separates files for each class and label them “[type of document]-[title]-[date].” It looks like this: . Then put a copy on your hard drive and another copy in the cloud (like OneDrive or DropBox). It’s important to backup everything, because you never when the zombie apocalypse is happening. #alwaysprepared #boyscouts.

5. Discipline

You gotta get disciplined. No pain no gain. If you believe it, you can achieve it. The future is in your hands. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Listen to the inspiration bro. That’s go-power flowing through you. You need all the go-power you can get because school is work, and you can’t work without getting disciplined. And you can’t get disciplined without getting disciplined. Once you pick a school, enroll in classes, download the lectures, sit down for your first class. You need a workout schedule for your brain. If you don’t have time, then make time. You may have to skip a few parties. Or rearrange your gym time. You may even need to break up with one of your girlfriends. Girlfriends take time bro. You gotta be able to tell someone no, so you can tell school, “Yes!” Dig out some time, make a schedule. Then: Get. It. Done. Whatever you do, just do what you gotta do to get it done.

Figure 2: Inspiring quote about discipline and pain, or something.

6. Schmooze

Next you have to schmooze. Schmooze with your teachers. Schmooze with the students. Get to know people. Be friendly. But do yourself a favor and don’t hit on the ladies in your class. That’s called “harassment.” Don’t be basic bro.

Schmoozing matters because it never hurts to have friends who can help boost your grades The better your teacher likes you, the easier your grades will be. I’m not talking about anything scandalous here. I’m saying that if your profs trust you, then there’s a better chance they’ll believe your excuses the next time you miss an assignment. Just don’t try the “Grandma’s sick” excuse. That one’s way overplayed, bro.

But there’s another big reason for schmoozing. Online school can get lonely if you don’t make some new bros, and broettes. Your classmates help explain things and share study tips. Plus, it’s kind of like the military. Bros that served in combat together are the best bros there are. School is like that, except you’re targeting tests instead of terrorists.

7. Social Landscaping

I’m sorry to say bro, but you got to act like a nerd if you want to get paid like a nerd.

Also dude you’ve got to clean up your Facebook page right now. I mean right now. Half your photo albums are that Cancun trip last summer, and the other half are your football pics from high school. High School man! Don’t be Uncle Rico, man. Please! Your profile pic has you holding a keg under one arm and a Hooters waitress under the other. I know you like to party. We all do. But you have to look like you don’t party. Your profs, and future bosses, will be trolling your pages to make sure you’re a working stiff, who wears button-up shirts and types all day. I’m sorry to say bro, but you got to act like a nerd if you want to get paid like a nerd. And nerds these days are getting paaaiiiiid! Don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling you to stop enjoying yourself. But clean up your pages. You need to landscape that terrain like you manscape your backhair. If you do Twitter, LinkedIn, or Tumblr—take care of those too. If you do Google+ you’re fine. No one checks that. If you do Instagram, make sure your pics aren’t all flex pics in the mirror. That’s basic bro. And if you do Pinterest then I don’t even know who you are.

8. Don’t take Shortcuts

You should already know this but some bros just won’t learn: Don’t take shortcuts. Remember that time you took your lady to see Nickleback. You will never live that down. I mean never! Even if bros like me all forgot you did that, you’d still have Nickleback music haunting your dreams. That’s why you shouldn’t take short cuts. It’s for your own good. You had the boy band phase back then, before you were a bro. Then you started working out, you junked all your boy band CD’s. You got some gold chains and a bicep tattoo. You learned some respect for your fellow bros. You stopped cutting corners. So you got swoll, you got the ladies, and you got to be a bro. You got so big you even had a pro-wrestling name picked out. It was “Tony Tornado.” My point is, if you take short cuts you’ll never know what you could have been. You’ll be bottom shelf. You’ll be basic when you could have been a boss.

School is like that. If you skip assignments, and don’t read the books, and rush through the work, it’s like you turned your whole education into a giant Nickleback concert. Gross Bro!

***

That’s all I got for you now Bro. But one last thing. Listen. I know you don’t like all that book work. And I know school ain’t fun, but that’s because it’s work. Duh bro! Work ain’t fun. If it was easy, everyone would do it. But work ain’t easy cuz it’s work bro. No prob though cuz you know how to work. Summer shredding for beach season is work too. Keeping up with girlfriends is work too. Housetraining your Great Dane is work too. You can’t get your brain swoll without putting in the reps. And you can’t get a good job without a swoll brain. Good things come to those who weight. Lift the mental weights bro and you’ll be glad you did. You can get smart, get a solid job, and stop living in your parents’ basement like a tool. You were made for muscley greatness bro, now go make it happen!